I am speculating about motives here, but it seems to me that this sort of behavior is an example of an all-too-common form of the 'banality of evil', Hannah Are

I am speculating about motives here, but it seems to me that this sort of behavior is an example of an all-too-common form of the 'banality of evil', Hannah Arendt's observation / thesis that the holocaust was enabled and implemented by a large cadre of rather ordinary people who were 'just doing their jobs'. In this case, there was no nucleus of genocidal, powerful and violently coercive psychopaths driving the process; it may have been almost self-organizing out of people 'just doing their jobs' in response to the initial mistake of shipping a tainted product, and either not thinking of the ethical issues, or actively suppressing them (some of both, I imagine), all helped along by a dose of self-interest. This is not intended to be in any way an excuse for what happened here; if anything, it is a cautionary tale, as any of us might, one day, be faced with a choice between just doing our job and doing the right thing.